A Kingdom Of Interceding

Read: Numbers 14:10-25

In keeping with your magnificent, unfailing love, please pardon the sins of this people, just as you have forgiven them ever since they left Egypt. Numbers 14:19

IN WORD

This wasn’t the first time Moses interceded for the people. They angered God with a golden calf at the foot of Mount Sinai, even as God was issuing commandments against idolatry. God offered to wipe Israel out and begin afresh with Moses, but Moses pleaded with God for the sake of His reputation. God relented and forgave His people. The prayers of a human being turned the divine will back in their favor.

Now in the wilderness, even in the face of outright rejection of the promise, the same dynamic is repeated. God offers to destroy the people and make a great nation out of Moses, but Moses pleads for the people again. Again, God relents. He hears the prayer and accepts it. A punishment remains, but so does the promise.

Why does this dynamic repeat itself? Is God really so shortsighted that He gets distracted from His long-range plans and has to be redirected back to them by the vision of a human being? No, for some reason left unexplained in Scripture, God intervenes in the affairs of people to the extent that a person asks Him to. He put the affairs of this world under the domain of the first humans, and He never removed the responsibility from us. The partnership between God and humanity to tend the Garden and govern the affairs of earth remains. It’s still a partnership. So He often indicates what would happen if He acted unilaterally, practically inviting a human agent to plead for another course. Then He responds the way He intended—in partnership with those who ask Him.

IN DEED

Make intercession for this world—for those in your domain, your family, your friends, your coworkers, your church, your community, and more—a high priority. It’s how Kingdom business gets done. The partnership between God and human beings is the way the Kingdom works on earth. Ask, seek, and knock. Intercede and invite God to accomplish His greatest purposes.

ADDITIONAL READING: Isaiah 59:16

Do not let us fail one another in interest, care, and practical help; but supremely we must not fail one another in prayer.

MICHAEL BAUGHEN